The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
Russia has been racing to the Moon’s south pole against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on there next week.
No country has ever landed on the south pole before, although both the US and China have landed softly on the Moon’s surface.
No report on whether or not Russia was attempting to use repurposed anti-ship missiles like the ones they use to attack schools and hospitals here on Earth.
The US should put a lander together out of trash for shits and giggles and have it land perfectly.
A 1979 TV show about a guy who put together a junk spaceship to salvage junk from the moon: Salvage 1.
My teenage self found it entertaining at the time. Hmmm, now where did I leave my parrot? I wonder if he could help me find a copy…
Or just land people in a few years. They’re working on a several hundred ton lander right now!
Well, I mean NASA pulled a spare mars rover out of their R&D testing labs, modified it’s toolset a bit, and sent it to Mars for a second soft landing (didn’t they use a sky-crane for both rover deployments?). I’d say that takes a bit more skill than landing on the Moon. But I don’t play Kerbal Space Program enough to know how much
On the remains of the
sovietrussian oneNot coincidentally none of the space agencies out there that are capable of this would find it worth their time to launch a mission just to teabag another nation.
Gestures broadly at the space race of the 1950s
None of the space agencies in the 1950s would be capable of landing gently on a crashed spacecraft.
In the 1950s they had the interest but not the capability. Today they have the capably but not the interest.
They are doing it with the artemis mission